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THE LAWS or RACE, 



AS CONNECTED WITH 



Inhrj, 



BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE LAW OF THE TERRITORIES," "RUSTIC 
RHYMES," ETC. 



"Seal up the mouth of outrage for awhile. 
Till wo can clear these ambiguities, 
And show their spring, their head, their true descent." 
Romeo and Juliet. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

WILLIS p. HAZARD, 724 CHESTNUT STREET. 
18 60. 



Co 



PJ 



i. 



§0Uii^Mis, 



Race, 7 

Mr. Dallas and Lord Brougham, . . 53 



RACE. 



Black spirits and. -v\^liitf>. 

Red. spirits and gra;^^ ; 
Alingle, mingle, iningle, 

Yoix tliat nningle mav." 

Macbeth. 

The attention of government, the debates of 
Congress, the public press, and the thoughts of 
the people, have been almost exclusively occupied, 
for the last five or six years, by questions of law 
and policy, arising out of the all-absorbing topic of 
slavery. To understand that subject, however, we 
must go deeper. Slavery does not rest on the 
Constitution or laws as a basis, but they on it. It 
is not the creature, but the director of our policy. 
It is a permanent, commanding flict in our country, 
and may not be disregarded. To manage it rightly, 
is the great problem of our politics, for it has power 
over us and our destiny. Slavery has a nature of 
its own, according to which we must shape our 
measures, if we would be safe and prosper. 

What is that nature ? The subject is usually 
discussed as if the question involved was slavery 



in the abstract ; and much is said about its injus- 
tice, its cruelty, its inexpediency. The obvious 
truth, that slavery implies a slave and a master, 
seems to be generally overlooked. Here the negro 
is the slave, and the white man the master, each of 
them strongly marked and contrasted, in their men- 
tal, moral, and physical qualities. These qualities 
must control the character of any relations between 
the parties. To understand slavery, therefore, we 
must study the nature of the white man and of the 
negro. Out of the principles of their respective 
organizations, we may be sure, slavery has grown 
and by them will be controlled, do what we may. 
Those principles were impressed upon each by Di- 
vine will, and the consequences that flow from 
them have the same source. As in the tumult of 
the ocean, in the countless variety of vegetable 
and animal life covering the earth, unity displays 
itself in diversity, and law reigns amid apparent 
confusion, so in the rush and strife and com- 
plexity of human affairs, the truth that was from 
the beginning, presides over and directs the storm. 
This controlling truth, this causa causaus,\^ ^^q can 
find it out, will afford a clue to guide us through 
the labyrhith of what is called the slavery question, 
and direct our efforts to definite and attainable 
ends. Obedience to its behests is the only path 
of safety. 



9 

The researches of ingenious men, during the pre- 
sent age, have produced results which are gradually 
leading the educated mind of Europe and this coun- 
try to the conclusion, that most of the difficult and 
complicated social and political questions which 
agitate the world, if not all of them, resolve them- 
selves into the question of race. The science of 
ethnology is yet in its infancy. Much ground is 
unexplored, and some hypotheses wait for induc- 
tive demonstration. The origin of man and of spe- 
cies, the definite classification of the branches of 
the human family, the laws by which they mingle 
or refuse to mingle, and other questions, remain 
open for investigation and discovery. 

But some progress has been made. The strata 
of the earth have been examined, the anatomy and 
physical structure of races of men and animals, 
have been studied and compared, the antique mon- 
uments of pre-historic eras, the earliest written re- 
cords, the religions and the laws, the languages, 
literature and art, the manners and customs of na- 
tions, have been investigated, and all these inqui- 
ries, intellectual, moral and physical, have resulted 
in the discovery of certain truths of great practi- 
cal importance ; of commanding importance, indeed, 
to us, as a nation. Those ethnical principles which 
concern the present topic, and seem now established 
as scientific truths, may be thus stated. 



10 

Men are divided into certain distinct races, or 
species, and these again into snb-species or perma- 
nent varieties, also distinct. These species refuse 
to amalgamate, the hybrids being more or less un- 
prolific with each other, and exhibiting a constant 
tendency to return to the pure race ; so that the 
separation of the races is preserved, and the crea- 
tion of a new race impossible. 

These races are distinguished by clearly defined 
and different organic physical structure, and also 
by different mental and moral traits, more espe- 
cially by iner^uality of mental and moral force, and 
have been so distinguished, without change, in all 
ages. 

These races have originated, or been distributed, 
in certain zones of climate favorable to their na- 
ture, and do not thrive, and flourish, and maintain 
themselves, in other portions of the earth.* 

Of these races, the white is the highest in the 
scale, the black the lowest. The average size of 
the brain of the white, is 92 cubic inches, of the 
negro 83, of the Hottentot and Australian TS.f 
The white alone possesses the intellectual and moral 
energy which creates that development of free 

* Grobineau, sur I'megalite des Races liumain. The Races 
of Men, by Robert Knox. Types of Mankind, by Nott and 
Gllddon. 

f Types of Mankind^, by Nott and Gliddou, p. 454. 



11 

government, industry, science, literature, and the 
arts, which we call civilization. The black can 
neither originate, maintain, nor comprehend civiliza- 
tion. He is by nature a barbarian. When in con- 
tact with the white race, he naturally and willingly 
yields to it, and becomes its servant. The two races 
have exhibited these characteristics in all ages. 

Various causes have brought together in this 
country, all the races ; the white, the yellow, and 
the black ; Teutonic, Celt, Mongol, and Negro. The 
qualities of each, are so many forces which are to 
act upon our destiny, according to their own respec- 
tive laws of being. As the present discussion re- 
lates only to the subject of slavery, if the conclu- 
sions of ethnical science above stated be correct, 
these three consequences logically follow : 

The white race must of necessity, by reason of 
its superiority, govern the negro, wherever the two 
live together. 

The two races can never amalgamate, and form 
a new species of man, but must remain forever dis- 
tinct; though mulattoes and other grades always 
exist, because constantly renewed. 

Each race has a tendency to occupy exclusively 
that portion of the country suited to its nature. 

These truths, if they be truths, are worth atten- 
tion. They must rule our politics and our destiny, 
either hy the constitution or over it, either with the 



12 

Union or without it, and no wit or force of man is 
strong enough to resist them. They are the higher 
law, to which we must submit on pain of destruc- 
tion, just as we must submit to the laws of steam 
and electricity, of wduds and weaves, of earth and 
iron, of acid and alkali ; and as Lord Bacon says, 
by submitting, govern, and direct them to our 
advantage. 

It is therefore a matter of serious interest, to dis- 
cover how far our constitution or laws, and the 
governing public opinion of the people, agree with 
this higher law, — these controlling principles and 
qualities of race, which form the plan of human or- 
ganization. The object of this essay is to show 
that they do agree. 

It is not surprising, that what is called the slavery 
question, but which ought to be called the negro 
question, absorbs so largely the attention of our 
people, for in it are involved, not merely their tem- 
poral interests, but all those questions of religionand 
morals, which in every age, have most deeply stirred 
the thoughts, and touched the feelings of men. Sla- 
very is apparently a violent contradiction of our 
position and pretensions as a free and Christian 
people. We proclaim liberty, in our constitution 
and our laws, as the foundation-principle of our 
government, yet we deny to four millions of men, 



13 

under our control, all civil rights whatever. The 
constitution was not made for them we say, they 
are not part of our people, they are not even men, 
they are property. We are professors of Chris- 
tianity, we have schools, we have churches, we have 
the bible, we have the benign scheme of Christian 
morality, which teaches the law of love as the rule 
of conduct, and which sanctifies the domestic rela- 
tions, the fountain source of social happiness. 
Nevertheless our schools, our churches, the bible 
and the sacredness of home, its ties and its joys, arc 
for ourselves, and not for the negro. We darken 
his mind with ignorance, we make him an instru- 
ment of gain, a beast of burden, and deliver him up 
without protection, to the callousness of cupidity, 
the recklessness of passion, the brutality of lust. 
We do this with forethought and design, we do it 
by law; we, who are not Austrians, Russians, or 
Turks, but Saxon men, transplanted Englishmen, 
who have brought with us magna charta and the 
common law, who are republicans and democrats, 
and who assert, wdth sincerity and truth too, our 
love of freedom and our reverence for human rights ! 
Surely this is a strange anomaly. The world 
has a right to ask us, we ought to ask ourselves, 
why do we this thing ? The answer is, because we 
cannot do otherwise. We have brought the negro 
to our shores, and therefore slavery with him. He 



14 

cannot participate in our liberty, our constitution, 
our churches, and our schools. We cannot, if we 
would, make him a partner in our civilization. Sla- 
very is the necessary result of his nature and of 
our nature. 

The difference and natural inequality of the two 
races, white and black, therefore govern what is 
called the slavery question, and all the constitu- 
tional and sectional questions dependent on it. The 
negro is the inferior, — born for subordination and 
servitude, which has been his lot in all ages, when 
brought within the sphere of the white race. The 
Saxon, the highest type of the white race, will not 
live with the negro on terms of equality, — on any 
other terms than those of marked and recognized 
inequality. This is the relation between them 
wherever they do live together. What position of 
inequality the negro shall hold, is for the Saxon to 
determine, an^l his judgment must be guided by his 
interest, his safety, his pride, and also by his sense 
of justice and benevolence. But he must be the 
judge, he who lives with the negro, not another 
who does not. The Saxon man in the South lives 
alongside of the negro. The latter is so strong in 
numbers, that he is a dangerous companion, unless 
his obedience and subjection can be rendered cer- 
tain. The negro is the laborer, and his labor is the 
basis on whicli is oroctcd llio wliolo fnltric nf the 



15 

wealth and prosperity of tlie Saxon. The negro is 
by nature indolent and improvident. The motives 
which stimulate other races to industry, have weak 
influence over him. Without some system of com- 
pulsion he will not work. He is also ignorant ; the 
animal predominates in his character over the in- 
tellectual and moral, his mind is weak, his passions 
are strong, he therefore requires restraint and guid- 
ance, both for his own good, and that of the su- 
perior race, for otherwise he would sink into helpless, 
hopeless vice, idleness, and misery. The Saxon, 
to whose control the negro has been committed, has 
determined that slavery is the plan of government 
which suits him better than any other. It fur- 
nishes a system of police, watchfulness, and re- 
straint which secures obedience, industry, order, 
and temperance on the part of the negro, by which 
the safety and prosperity of the white race are 
maintained and promoted ; it secures also, the physi- 
cal well-being of the negro, by giving to his master 
an interest in that well-being. The labor of the 
slave is the source of wealth ; labor comes of health 
and strength ; health and strength of sufficient 
food, raiment, shelter, and regular, but not exces- 
sive, work. The Saxon residing in the South with 
the negro, has chosen this system for his govern- 
ment. He claims the right to choose it or any 
other, and he claims this right by prerogative of 



16 

race, by the decree of nature, which made him 
superior to the negro, in force of mind and charac- 
ter, and therefore his ruler. He will not relinquish 
this claim. He cannot if he would. His right to 
it runs in his veins, beats in his breast, and is 
founded on immemorial usage, from the earliest 
periods of recorded history. He will resist whilst 
he can, any power that shall attempt to interfere 
with that right, or dictate to him how he shall use 
it. 

On the other hand, this same Saxon or Teu- 
tonic man, is a lover of liberty. His is the only 
race that does love it, and has been able to acquire 
and keep it. He loves instinctively, personal 
liberty, power over himself, freedom from the will 
of another. He loves also political liberty; that 
is to say, a share of political power, so that he 
may consent to any control to which he does sub- 
mit, and form himself a part of the government he 
obeys. To such a man, slavery in the abstract is 
revolting; but his love of liberty is, in part, love 
of power. He sympathizes, therefore, with the 
oppressed, provided he be not the oppressor, and 
would gladly break all chains of bondage, except 
those which he imposes. These characteristics of 
the Saxon, his practical ability and faculty for ab- 
stract thought; his passion for conquest and power, 
and his love of liberty, truth, and justice, whilst 



17 

they make him a colonizer and a ruler, also render 
his rule beneficent. Churches, charities, law, order, 
industry, wealth, arts, and letters, follow his foot- 
steps. He is not a destroyer, but a builder; and 
although he will be a master where he can, he is 
a kind master, and his authority is a shelter and a 
protection. 

Out of these relative qualities of the negro and 
the Tue tonic races, and more especially of the 
Saxon, the highest type of the latter, grows the 
apparently anomalous fact that slavery exists in 
this country; that it is sanctioned and protected 
by the laws and the constitution, and by public 
opinion. These qualities also explain the differ- 
ence of sentiment between North and South on 
the subject of slavery. The Saxon loves power; 
his is the conquering, colonizing race. Wherever 
he goes,— to India, to China, to Australia, or Ame- 
rica, — he subdues and governs the weaker and lower 
races. In the South, he is in contact with the 
negro, the weakest and lowest of all. He must 
therefore control the negro. In the North, the 
aborigines having withered and vanished before 
him, because they would neither submit to him 
nor be civilized by him, the Saxon finds no race 
inferior to his own, or so inferior, that he can as- 
sume any marked and positive dominion over it, 
or so numerous as to require any laws to insure 

2* 



18 

his superiority. Now, at least, Saxon, Celt, and 
German, live together harmoniously, though, per- 
haps, this is only because as yet the Saxon prac- 
tically predominates and governs. But a question 
has arisen between the Saxon of the North and the 
negro of the South, as to which shall possess and 
cultivate vast regions of unoccupied fertile land, 
the property of the whole white race of this coun- 
try, represented by its government. True to his 
instincts of conqueror, colonizer, founder, the Saxon 
of the North claims this land for himself; he claims 
that he, and not the negro, shall occupy and till 
it, live on it and by it. Moved by the same in- 
herent spirit, the Saxon of the South makes a simi- 
lar demand. He will possess this region of pro- 
mise, he says, and take with him his subject race, 
his serfs and vassals, to work it, not for themselves, 
but for him; and to give plausibility to his claim, 
he calls them, not citizens, not people, not even 
men, but property. Why may not he, as well as 
the northern man, go to the new territories with 
his property? To this the northern Saxon replies, 
that these negroes are not property, but men, and 
bring with them human influences, not of the 
highest order; but, whether property or not, they 
will occupy the land and consume its produce, both 
and all of which lie wants for his own race. Let 
the southern Saxon go, therefore, to the territories, 



19 

if he will, but leave his negroes behind him ; or let 
him take them to regions where the white man 
cannot work, — to climates congenial to the negro. 

The claim of the southern man meets another 
obstacle in the North. The Saxon is a lover of 
justice, of humanity, above all, of freedom. He 
loves these in the abstract; he loves them, too, as 
the foundation of wealth, and order, and improve- 
ment; but he loves them and their results for him- 
self, for his own race. He therefore hates slavery, 
unless he is the master, and he is not by choice a 
master. He prefers that all classes where he 
dwells shall enjoy liberty, equal rights, the means 
and opportunities of civilization and progress. In 
the South he is a master, and there he maintains 
and defends slavery, only because the negro is in 
the South. In the North there is no race which he 
is willing to enslave, and therefore his love of 
liberty and its blessings, acting without check, he 
is averse to slavery. As the citizen of a northern 
State, he has banished slavery, and made the negro 
free, because he cannot be a competitor or an 
enemy; because slavery, as a legal institution, is 
not necessary. The land and its fruits, and in- 
dustry and its rewards, are in the hands of the 
superior race. 

But the Saxon is not merely a northern man, he 
is a citizen of the United States. In that capacity 



20 

he is a slaveholder and a master. In that capacity- 
he shares in the wealth that slavery produces, and 
true to his love of power and of wealth, he is will- 
ing enough thus to be a master ; he is willing that 
his race in the South shall hold the negro in bond- 
age. He would do the same thing now in the North, 
as he once did, were the negro race a large and 
firmly established part of the population. But the 
Saxon can work in the north, and he wants all the 
land and all the work for himself. Therefore he 
has driven the negro from his borders, not indeed 
by force, but by opinion ; by the pressure of ener- 
getic competition — a struggle in which the negro is 
too weak to engage. This the Saxon will do wher- 
ever he can find work for his hands and land to 
till, in a climate that permits him to work. The 
silent, irresistible operation of this principle, almost 
complete in the free states, is going on also through- 
out the northern slave States, where the negro is 
disappearing, not so rapidly as the Indian, but 
steadily and surely, before the conquering indus- 
try of the white race. The same spirit is indicated 
by laws passed from time to time in northern 
States, prohibiting the residence of the negro with- 
in their limits. He is not made a slave in the North 
for obvious reasons before intimated. The negro 
population is so small, that no extraordinary pre- 
cautions are necessary to render it safe. Neither 



21 

is slavery necessary to keep it in that place of 
social inferiority, which the pride of the superior 
race requires. Circumstances and natural laws do 
this, without the aid of the legislature. Moreover, 
the vast majority of the whites are themselves la- 
boring men ; they cannot therefore own slaves. 
Ruling as they do the law-making power, they 
would not permit the rich to own slaves — for this 
toiling and governing class, will endure no compe- 
tition in its industry by the negro. Neither do the 
rich desire to have him for a slave, because the 
free, intelligent industry of their own race is far 
more productive and profitable, and brings with it 
to the employer, no responsibility, no duties, and 
no danger. 

But though the negro in the North is not a slave, 
he is made an outcast and a pariah. There is no 
place for him in northern society, no aspirations or 
hopes to stimulate him, none of the prizes of life, 
wealth, power, respectability, are held out to him, 
to nerve his efforts and elevate his desires. He is 
governed and protected in all his rights, wholly by 
the white race, without his participation. He is 
excluded from office, from the hustings, from the 
court-house, from the exchange, from every intel- 
lectual calling or pursuit, not by legal enactment, 
but by his own incapacity, and by opinion; by the 
feeling of caste and race, that is to say, by divine 



90 



laws, which are stronger than any the legislature 
can make. He has no civil or political power what- 
ever, by which to protect himself, and he may not 
lay a finger on one of those three wonderful boxes, 
the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box, 
which contain the instruments and weapons by 
which freemen defend their rights. They are for 
the white race only. A negro governor, legislator, 
judge, magistrate or juryman does not exist, could 
not by possibility exist, in the whole North ; this 
race is not only excluded from all political and civil 
place and power, but the avenues to social rank 
and respectability are closed against him ; or rather 
they are too steep and difficult for him to climb. 
He is not a land owner, a manufacturer, a merchant. 
There is no legal obstacle ; but land, machinery 
and ships are things he cannot manage. There are 
no black attorneys-at-law, physicians, authors or 
capitalists in the North. The law opens to the 
negro these spheres of activity, as widely as to 
the white man, but they are far beyond the negro's 
wildest dreams, because beyond his talents. He 
is thus pushed down by a superior moral and intel- 
lectual force, which he can neither comprehend nor 
resist, into those pursuits which the Saxon, and 
even the Celt, avoids if he can, — into labors which 
require the least strength of mind or body, which 
yield the least profit, and are menial and degrad- 



9.q 



ing. The spirit of caste drives the negro out of 
churches, theatres, hotels, rail-cars, steamboats, or 
assigns to him, in them, a place apart. It drives 
him into the cellars, dens, and alleys of towns, into 
hovels in the country ; and it does all this without 
laws, without concert or design, without unkind- 
ness or cruelty, but unconsciously, simply because 
it cannot help doing it, obeying thus instinctive im- 
pulse, and the immutable, eternal laws by which 
the races of men are kept apart, and are preserved 
through countless ages without change. These 
laws are divine. They execute themselves in spite 
of party combinations or fanatical legislatures, or 
philanthropic enthusiasts, or visionary dreamers 
about human perfectability and the rights of man. 
These laws have destined the Saxon to command, 
the negro to obey, and we see, therefore, that with- 
out law or by law, the Saxon is the master and the 
negro the servant, both in the North and in the 
South. 

Such is the state of facts and opinion produced 
by the natural laws of race, on this fearful subject 
of slavery. These opinions and facts, being trans- 
lated into the language of parties and politicians, 
mean simply, what every newspaper tells us, that 
the South claims an equal right with the North to 
possess the territories, which are the common pro- 
perty of both ; that the North claims the right to 



24 

exclude slaveiy, in other words, the negro race, 
from those territories, but at the same time declares 
that it will respect and maintain slavery in the 
States where it already exists, so long as they 
choose to keep it. 

These are the opinions of the great majority of 
the people, to whatever party they may belong. 
It is impossible for them to have any other opinions. 
There are in the North some abolitionists, carried 
away by the enthusiasm of a dominating idea, who 
dream of emancipation ; and there are also some 
slavery propagandists, who have not yet escaped 
the influence of party passion and discipline, but 
every indication of popular feeling, shows that the 
great masses of the North will obey the instincts 
of their race, maintain its supremacy and dominion 
over the negro, and keep liberty and land, and 
wealth and power for themselves, exclusively, 
whether in the North or the South. 

If such 1)0 the sentiment of the northern people, 
that sentiment must rule the government. It will 
control the movements of parties, defeat the schemes 
of politicians, and break through all factitious com- 
binations which seek to restrain it. We have seen 
the power of this controlling spirit of race showed 
itself when the issue was joined between North and 
South, as to which should possess the territory of 



25 

Kansas ; how, by instant and passionate creation, 
the Republican party arose ; how the northern 
Democracy immediately abandoned the South. 
When the North is united on any question, it must 
govern the country. All elements of strength and 
command are in the North, because the North is 
inhabited exclusively by the superior race. Hence 
its more rapid progress in population, wealth, and 
the arts of civilization. These have never flourished 
in Africa, and the South is partly African. The 
seeds of improvement cannot there strike deep 
roots and grow to healthy, fruitful plants, as they 
do in the North, because the sub-soil of society is 
barren. 

Refinement, luxury, culture there may be in the 
South, among the few, but these do not constitute 
civilization. They are some only of its flowers 
and fruits, and even they, can have but a feeble 
and evanescent growth and life, unless sustained 
and enriched by the intelligence, morality, energy, 
aspirations, diversified occupation and exciting emu- 
lation of a superior race, filling all the avenues of 
industry and enterprise. The negro is unequal to 
such labors, struggles or hopes, and a civilization 
founded on him, must be sickly and ephemeral. 
So we are taught by history, so by ethnology, and 
the comparative statistics of the North and the 
Soitth of our country, tell the same story, and in 



26 

most emphatic language. The North, therefore, 
must govern on all questions that arise between 
North and South, for the decree of nature herself 

'■'■ Grants unto dwellers with the pine, 
Dominion o'er the palm and vine." 

We have seen how the opinions of the North, in 
relation to slavery, are the result of the laws of 
race. Are these opinions just and wise, and what is 
the policy which the North should endeavor to 
carry out ? Perhaps the same laws of race can 
afford warnings and lessons to guide us. 

The contest between the white and the dark, the 
superior and inferior races of mankind, is not pecu- 
liar to this age or to our country. It fills the pages 
of history, and is going on at this moment all over 
the world ; in India, China, Syria, Turkey, Africa, 
and America, North and South. The white brings 
his force of intellect and will, his knowledge and 
arts. The dark man has on his side his numbers, 
the climate, and the wealth he produces ; wealth to 
allure, the climate to enervate or destroy ; numbers 
which can neither be civilized nor permanently 
conquered, but which can corrupt the blood and de- 
base the morals of the higher race. With these he 
maintains his ground. Saxon nor Celt can colo- 
nize the tropics. The English have not done it in 
India or Africa, nor the French in Algiers. The 



27 

law of nature, which assigns certain races to appro- 
priate zones of climate, protects and executes it- 
self 

The types of races, at least in their primary 
classification, are permanent. They never change, 
and different species do not mingle, so as to consti- 
tute a new race ; although those nearly allied, as 
the varieties of the white, may form a people partly 
of mixed blood, yet the tendency is to separation, 
as may be seen now in the nations of Europe. 
The division between white and black is more 
strictly maintained. The mixed breeds are weak 
in constitution and unfruitful with each other, and 
return more speedily to whichever parent stock is 
favored by the climate and numbers. In our 
southern States, that is to say, in the cotton states, 
or extreme South, the negro has found a congenial 
climate, and obtained a permanent foothold. He 
can multiply, without fresh blood from his native 
regions. He can ivorlz in the South, but the white 
man cannot. He cannot, like the negro, live and 
grow there ; and would degenerate, and ere long 
disappear by natural causes, unless his numbers 
were kept up by emigration from the North, to 
which he belongs. All influences favor the in- 
crease and ultimate ascendency of the black race 
in our extreme South and the countries around the 
Gulf of Mexico. The slave trade favors it; the 



28 

demand for cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar, and other 
Southern produce, favors it, by encouraging the 
growth of negro population. The negro multiplies, 
the white man dwindles and decays. If not a 
planter, he becomes "poor white trash." Even 
now, slavery can be maintained where it exists, 
only by foreign power in alliance with the resident 
white race, which, as the causes above mentioned 
continue to operate with greater force, will become 
more and more dependent on such support. In a 
society so constituted, there can be virtually two 
classes only, masters and slaves, the latter a con- 
stant source of dread, either in peace or war, un- 
improvable and essentially barbarous. There can 
be no educated, wealthy middle class, no skilled 
mechanics, no intelligent, trustworthy laborers, no 
" bone and sinew," and sooner or later, from causes 
external or internal, the negroes will revolt and take- 
possession of the country. Were slavery abolished, 
the same result would be brought about, more gradu- 
ally and peaceably. The land would not pay. It 
would be abandoned by the rich and enterprising, and 
Africa with barbarism would speedily become su- 
preme. In either case, this seems to be the probable 
fate of those regions, which events may hasten or 
retard. Nothing but cotton keeps the white race in 
our Southern States now. They are not a desira- 
ble residence. The climate is unhealthy, and the 



29 

conveniences and pleasures of civilization are want- 
ing. The rich lead a nomadic life, spending most 
of the year in Europe or the North. They, as well 
as those who are obliged to remain, are bound to 
the country only by cotton. Meanwhile the cot- 
ton land is becoming exhausted. Worn-out plan- 
tations multiply. Even at present prices, cotton 
can be made profitable only on new, or the small 
area of permanently fertile soils. Should the price 
ever fidl much below the present, by reason of sup- 
plies from other regions, a result by no means im- 
probable, then the South would be abandoned to 
the negro. Should the spirit of revolt ever be so 
diffused among the slaves as to destroy the feeling 
of security, also not improbable, the same effect 
would be produced. Confidence in the safety of 
life and property, is essential to society. All facts, 
all tendencies, all causes, therefore, point in one 
direction, — the ultimate ascendency of the black 
race, in that portion of the country favorable to its 
nature. 

Neither is this effect so far in the future, as to be 
beyond the scope of our politics. The negro in- 
creases in the South with tropical luxuriance. His 
growth is stimulated by the value of his labor and 
by importations of fresh blood from its native 
source. We have now four uiillions, a formidable 
number, which settles the question as to the per- 

3* 



30 

manent establishment of the race in our country. 
But the child is now born that will see thirty-six 
millions in the Southern States, more by four mil- 
lions than our present entire population. Thirty- 
six millions in seventy-eight years, with perhaps 
Hayti, Cuba, Jamaica, and other islands in the 
West Indies, by that time in the hands of the 
same race. Can this mass of barbarism be go- 
verned at all, whether in slavery or freedom, by 
white men, who would be willing to live in the 
midst of it ? The mere figures answer the ques- 
tion, and oppress the mind by the terrible future. 
But eighty years is too far off for the vision of our 
politicians, who look only to the next election ; or 
of the majority of our people indeed, engrossed as 
they are by the interests of the passing hour. Let 
us take a shorter period, then. In fifty years we 
shall have sixteen millions ; or if that be too re- 
mote for the grasp of our attorney-at-law states- 
manship, let us look only twenty-five years ahead. 
Our four millions will then be eight. Is even this 
a manageable number ? We have trouble enough 
now with four. They are constantly bringing us 
to the verge of disunion. They absorb the public 
mind, and the thoughts and the time of government, 
by the dangers they evoke. They have produced 
sectional animosity and strife, where peace and 
good will should reign. They have thrown the ad- 



ol 

ministration of the law throughout the South, into 
lynch-law committees, and have forbidden any 
Northern man to go there, unless he leaves his in- 
dependence, and freedom of thought and speech 
behind him. They have destroyed all industry but 
their own, and made the South dependent upon for- 
eign supplies, for every article which human ingenu- 
ity has invented for the comfort and accommodation 
of man. They must be sentinelled and watched, 
to protect society from horrors worse than war. 
They inspire terror during peace, and in case of 
invasion, would be more fearful than the enemy. 
By means of their weakness they control our po- 
litics ; they conquer us by abject submission ; they 
overwhelm us by mere prolific growth ; they have 
manacled our hands and feet with fetters of gold, 
and, nominally slaves, they are really the masters 
of our destiny. Our four millions have done all 
this. What then may we expect of them, when 
they are eight, sixteen, thirty-six millions ? Will 
they not say, or rather, will not the eternal laws 
of nature say through them, this land of rice and 
cotton, of swamps and malaria, is ours, because we 
alone can live and work in it. It belongs to us by 
right divine. It is our Africa of the New World, 
in it we will rule and revel ? 

Meanwhile, however, alongside of this new Africa, 
separated only by indistinct and shifting bound- 



32 

aries, its close neighbor, forever, is a new Europe, 
a vast region, where the white man can live and 
work, and which he is filling up with the rapidly 
increasing millions of his race ; a race born to rule, 
born for liberty, voluntary labor, intellectual pro- 
gress, the arts, religion and civilization — the only 
historic race. New Africa is united to this new 
Europe by political ties, and by other stronger 
ties which bind together the, as yet, dominant races 
of each. The two together form a nation, a people, 
with common interests and hopes, and so far as 
they can achieve it, a common destiny. Now what 
is the plain duty of this nation of white men, gov- 
erning by right of intellectual superiority, the black 
race established among them; what is its duty as a 
nation, as a united people, to themselves and to the 
negro ? If there be any truth in ethnical science, 
any warning in the lessons of history, a more seri- 
ous question never was presented for the considera- 
tion of a government, whetlier we regard the 
present, or the rapidly approaching future. 

The negro race, in mind and character, is weak 
and imperfectly developed, belongs to a lower 
order of man. Slavery has no other justification, 
excuse or apology, than this. If this be not true, 
American slavery is a monstrous wickedness, 
against which every christian should preach a cru- 
sade till, at whatever cost or sacrifice, it be ban- 



33 

ished from the land. Is it not, then, the obvious 
diit}^ of the nation which holds the negro in subjec- 
tion, to prevent the growth of a race which is in- 
capable of liberty or civilization, which is just so 
much heathenism and barbarism wherever it exists; 
of a population which forms no part of the people, 
which is alien and hostile, and thus a source, not 
of strength but of weakness ; of a race which can 
be enslaved, which must be held in subjection by 
some system equivalent to slavery, and which, 
from natural causes, increases so rapidly, as to 
threaten, at no distant day, to escape all control, 
and to banish, exterminate, or bring down to its 
own level, where it is planted and luxuriates, the 
superior race by which it is now governed ? Surely 
no argument is necessary to prove that a nation 
must be happier, wiser, richer, more powerful and 
more glorious, where the whole people are of the 
strongest, m6st intellectual and most moral race of 
mankind, than where any portion of the people are 
degraded by nature, and incapable of progress or 
civilization. Barbarism is barbarism, whether in 
Africa or America; and a country inhabited by 
barbarians cannot be civilized. Just in proportion 
to the number of its barbarians, is it wanting in the 
elements of civilization, and just in that proportion, 
too, is it weak and liable to overthrow, from dan- 
gers within and without. The history of the world. 



34 

from the dim annals of the most distant past, to the 
journalism of the present hour, proves this. AVhat 
destroyed the civilization of ancient India, Egypt, 
and Persia, but the gradual predominance of the 
dark races of the South, favored by climate, over 
the white race of the North, which founded that 
civilization and maintained it, so long as the race 
could maintain its ascendency. 

To the same cause, the admixture and degrada- 
tion of blood, has been attributed with every sem- 
blance of reason, the decay of Grecian and Roman 
power, art, literature and philosophy ; all of which 
sprang from the intellect of the northern race, and 
dechned as that race melted away before the dark 
races of the South, aided by a climate suited to 
their nature.* What does modern Europe show, 
but the energetic conflict of the superior races with 
each other, growing stronger from conflict, and 
evolving letters, arts, liberty, government, wealth 
and history, from their heroic struggles and labors, 
as the golden harvest rises out of the ploughed and 
harrowed soil, wherever those races fill the country, 
as they do in France, England, Germany and all the 
north. During the same period, the south of Europe, 
Italy, Spain, Turkey and Greece, has been growing 
weaker and weaker, until, at length, all these na- 

* Grobincau, sur rinegalite des Races humaiue, vol. 2. 



35 

tions are in reality governed by the stronger races, 
represented by what are called the " Great Powers," 
and are maintained by them in nominal, sickly, fee- 
ble, fictitious nationalities and independence, only 
because those Great Powers are jealous of each 
other. If we look to the East, the picture is still 
more sombre, because the predominant race is dark- 
er. Over India, Persia, Syria, Egypt, the seats of 
antique civilization, the fountain-sources of modern 
philosophy, poetry and religion, has settled the 
thick shades of ignorance and barbarism. Liberty, 
literature, art and government, have died out, be- 
cause the onl}^ race whose mind spontaneously pro- 
duces these fruits, has died out. The movements 
of their people, whether in peace or war, are un- 
known ; they are not worth recording, and there is 
no one to record them. Like the fights of the wild 
beasts of the jungle, or the migrations of birds or 
bufQiloes ; like the quarrels of savage tribes in Africa 
or North America, governed not by ideas but by 
animal needs or instincts, what these races of hu- 
man animals do, forms no part of history. They 
can give us no knowledge or wisdom, and their 
actions and habits are interesting only as scientific 
facts, to the physiologist, to the ethnologist, to the 
student of that mysterious creature, man, who pre- 
sents such varied aspects in his manifold nature. 
If we look to our side of the Atlantic, the same 



36 

story is told by the West Indies, and Central and 
South America, all of them colonized by the white 
race, which, in all, has proved too weak for the cli- 
mate, the aboriginal Indian and the negro, and is 
receding before them. The mongrel population, 
arising from these, cannot maintain free govern- 
ment, can scarcely keep up a waning and feeble 
civilization, and makes no progress in industry, 
wealth, letters or the arts. It is rapidly going back 
to the original type of the country, or to the negro, 
who finds there a congenial home. 

These are the teachings of history, and also of 
the passing hour. Shall we heed them and en- 
deavor to check the extension of Africa in our 
country, with its barbarism and its weakness, with 
the moral blight and manifold curses of slavery that 
accompany it, or shall we give it scope and encour- 
agement to grow and spread, wherever reckless 
cupidity may choose to take it ? Shall we keep 
our broad stretches of fertile land for the Saxon, 
that he may found thereon an empire of liberty, 
Christianity and intellectual culture, to endure and 
flourish for ages, or shall we plant them with the 
negro race, and devote them to ignorance, slavery, 
fetichism and barbarism ? This is the question 
which events have at length put fliirly and squarely 
to us. We, the white race, who own this country, 
who are the natural masters of the negro, who 



37 

have, therefore, the right and the power to decide 
the question, are now called on to decide it, in our 
national, corporate character, as a people and a 
government. Can any one doubt how we shall de- 
cide it ? To doubt is to deny our history since the 
dawn of civilization, to deny all the marking quali- 
ties of our race. We will decide it if we can, as a 
united people ; but if we cannot, if cotton and sla- 
very and the negro, have already weakened our 
Southern brethren by their spells and enchantments, 
so that the South cannot decide according to the 
traditions and impulses of our race, then we of the 
North, will still decide it, as by right we may, — by 
right of reason, of race, and of law. 

The policy, therefore, of restraining the growth of 
the negro race within those limits of climate, where 
he alone can work and thrive, is indicated by the 
qualities of that race, and accords also with the 
dominant characteristics of the white. These cha- 
racteristics have from the beginning, ruled the con- 
duct of government, which has uniformly permitted 
or excluded the negro under the name of slavery, 
according to the conditions of climate. Wherever 
the Saxon could work, he has claimed the soil for 
himself alone. Wherever he could not work, he 
has, either in his individual or national character 
of slaveholder, taken or allowed the negro to be 
taken, to work for him. Natural laws would have 

4 



38 

brought about this result without the aid of the 
legislature, for these laws confine each race to its 
appropriate portion of the earth. The climate in 
which the negro can work and thrive repels the 
white, whilst the negro is excluded from the North, 
both by the climate and by the competition of the 
more intellectual and energetic race. If all the 
laws of the Northern States prohibiting slavery 
were at once repealed, this state of things would 
remain unaltered. The negro is not only disap- 
pearing from those States where he is free, but also 
from those where slavery is still permitted, and 
where the climate allows the white man to obtain 
a footing as a laborer. The question, which race 
shall possess the national territories, has for another 
reason ceased to be of practical importance, and 
cannot much longer be kept alive, even as a theme 
for party agitation. There are no territories now 
belonging to the government, from which the white 
race is excluded by the climate ; there are none 
therefore in which the negro can be planted and 
grow. Neither laws nor party conventions, • nor 
Supreme Court decrees can put him, or keep him 
there, against the higher law of nature. 

There are, however, two other modes by which 
the growth and extension of the negro may be 
stimulated, that present more serious difficulties. 



39 

One is the ucqiiisition of new land in a climate 
suited to his nature ; the other is fresh importations 
from Africa. The indications are plain enough, that 
this terrible and protean slavery question will soon 
assume these shapes, and present these two issues 
to the nation ; — further annexation of tropical terri- 
tory, and the revival of the slave trade. The one 
is a necessary consequence of the other, for the 
land is worthless without negroes to till it, they 
alone being able to till it. The negroes we now 
have are all needed for the land we now possess, as 
their price proves. If we get more land therefore, 
we must have more negroes, just as a farmer, when 
he buys more acres, must increase his force. 

Unfortunately, these two projects appeal directly 
to the ruling passions and marking traits of the 
Saxon ; — his love of conquest and adventure, his love 
of colonizing and founding, his love of material pros- 
perity and profitable industry, his love of supre- 
macy and control. These qualities have sent him 
all over the world in quest of land to subdue and 
cultivate and possess, and have encircled the earth 
with his drumbeat and his canvas, his language, 
his laws, and his arts. Tempting, indeed, are the 
fertile regions in and around the Gulf of Mexico, 
rich in the productions for which the markets of the 
world open their hungry mouths, and occupied now 
by a weak, effete, mongrel, withered race, who 



40 

cannot govern them, or cnltivate them, or bring ont 
of their soil a tithe of its wealth, or defend them 
against an invader. They invite us by their allur- 
ing looks, by their syren smiles, by their bewitch- 
ing beauty, and say to our valor, our enterprise, 
our daring, mounting ambition ; — come and take us 
and our delights ; we belong not to the weak, but 
to the strong and bold. 'Tis the old story ; the 
Cleopatra of the South, the '' serpent of the Nile," 
entangling the sensual, brave, athletic and conquer- 
ing northern Anthony, in her silken meshes of dalli- 
ance, lapping him in luxury and sloth, kissing away 
his manhood, courage, glory, power, and " pro- 
vinces." 

" The barjije she sat in, like a burnished throne, 

Burned on the water ; the poop was beaten gold, 

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that 

The winds were love-sick with them ; the oars were silver, 

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made 

The water which they beat to follow faster, 

As amorous of their strokes." 

So sits the queen of the Antilles, and her charm- 
ing sisters in their ambrosial summer sea. From 
them all, 

" A strange, invisible perfume hits the sense," 

from them and the adjacent shores, redolent of 



41 

orange groves, of sugar and cotton and tobacco, 
promising land, ease, wealth, and power, to enter- 
prise and courage, whilst Africa offers her dusky 
millions of docile laborers, feebly and inefficiently 
protected now, by repealable laws. 

Indications are not wanting, to show the force of 
this temptation. Reiterated and exaggerated com- 
plaints of injuries and insults offered to us by the 
weak and decaying governments who possess this 
El Dorado, are ostentatiously paraded in presidential 
messages, as pretexts for invasion. Fillibustering 
expeditions for the same purpose, are connived at 
by our government, and eagerly supported by 
Southern opinion. Northern capital sends slave- 
ships to Africa, and cargoes of captured negroes 
are landed on our southern shores, without punish- 
ment, and with scarcely the mockery of trial. The 
natural laws of trade, by which demand creates 
supply, favor this influence of the characteristics 
of our people. All these causes and tendencies 
prove, that the tropics are the natural home of 
the dark race, to which it is led by irresistible laws, 
and which it is destined to fill and occupy. Afri- 
cans and Chinese are brought now by annually 
increasing thousands to the West Indies. St. Do- 
mingo is already under the dominion of the negro, 
and but for the European governments which own 
them, Cuba, and the other islands of the same 

4* 



42 

group, would speedily fall under his power, as they 
are now almost exclusively occupied by his race. 
In Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, and Central America, 
the Spanish blood of the conquerors is rapidly run- 
ning out, and the mixed breeds are resolving them- 
selves into the native Indian or the negro. The 
white race cannot colonize these regions, cannot 
build up in them an enduring, Christian, European 
civilization. It can hold them only as provinces, 
governing their inhabitants as a subject people, by 
military power, as England holds and governs In- 
dia, and France Algiers. 

Now what is our duty and our policy as a na- 
tion, — as a government ? What is the duty of the 
Northern States, who can, if they choose, control 
the government, as to these inseparably connected 
questions — the annexation of tropical territory, and 
the revival of the slave trade ? Shall we yield to 
the allurements of this garden of Armida, and send 
thither our own race, to have its blood corrupted 
by amalgamation, and its energies weakened by 
the climate, finally to be exterminated by the 
negro, or sink to his level? Shall we permit our 
love of power and of gain to become rapacity and 
cruelty ? Shall we degrade our souls and blemish 
our name, by wars of conquest on lying pretexts 
against weak neighbors, or by hunting negroes in 
Africa, trafficking with savage slave-captors and stir- 



43 

ring up strife between barbarous tribes, to obtain 
supplies for our markets ? Such things have been 
done ere now in the world, and by Saxons ; nay, 
are doing at this moment. They accord but too 
well with the domineering, encroaching, grasping 
spirit of the race; and the temper of our people, 
their passionate love of money and of territory, jus- 
tifies alarm. At present, there is strife between the 
North and the South ; but it has been caused chiefly, 
almost wholly, by the bold attempt to plant the 
negro where the Saxon alone should dwell, and b}'' 
the acts of violence and aggression which accom- 
panied that attempt. When the quarrel on this 
subject ceases, as it soon will, should the South point 
to Cuba, Mexico, and Central America, and speak 
of cotton, sugar, tobacco, and coffee ; of acquisition, 
expansion, wealth, and dominion to the northern 
man. the song will be a music to which Saxon ears 
always have listened, and always will listen, with 
delight. The eloquence of the South can veil even 
the repulsive features of the slave-trade. Slavery, 
we may be told, nay, we are told, is a blessing to 
the negro. It educates, christianizes, elevates him. 
The horrors of the middle passage are caused by 
the law. Legalize the traffic, and the slave-ship 
will become as comfortable as any other. Why not, 
then, permit African as well as Irish emigration? 
Dressed in this garb, the slave-trade may offer. 



44 

especially to the eyes of self-interest, willing to be 
convinced, the aspect of a Christian mission, to 
rescue Africa from barbarism and idolatry. 

Such are the dangers to which the tendencies of 
race are leading us. We should resist them while 
we may. The revival of the slave-trade would, by 
the infusion of fresh barbarism, lower the character 
of our negro population, multiply its numbers, which 
already increase too rapidly, add to the perils of 
servile war, and degrade our moral sentiment and 
self-respect, by a loathsome traffic, condemned by 
the enlightened Jiumanity of the civiHzed world. It 
would also hasten the period of African domination 
in the South. 

We can get the coveted territories only by war; 
war not merely with the people who possess them, 
but probablj^ also with European nations, already 
jealous of our increasing power. When got, they 
would invite aggression, present vulnerable points, 
and could be held only by a large military force. 
A standing arm^^ therefore, and foreign wars, 
would be the results of such an acquisition. 

The people of these territories, though weak and 
inferior to ourselves, are nevertheless within the 
pale of civilized. Christian nations. They are, 
therefore, under the protection of the law of na- 
tions. Without a gross violation of that law, we 
could not, by whatever process they might be an- 



45 ^ 

nexed, disregard the rights of these people. We 
could not govern them as a subject race, — as England 
governs India, — as we govern our negroes. These 
people would participate, therefore, in our liberty, 
our constitution, and our laws. These mongrel, de- 
caying, ignorant, morally and intellectually inferior 
races, would thus become our fellow-citizens, would 
share in the government of our country, and in- 
fluence or control, by their votes, the interests, the 
will, and the destiny of the North — of the Saxon. 
The laws of race prohibit such a partnership. It 
would break the Union. The Saxon would not live 
with Mexicans, Indians, half-breeds, and worn-out 
Spaniards, on terms of equality, or share their des- 
tiny, or permit them to partake in his authority 
over his own country. According to our constitution, 
acquired territories must become States. Whether 
political power were granted to the original inhabi- 
tants or withheld, and the supremacy given to the 
conquering race, the contest between South and 
North would be revived with tenfold bitterness. 
Conflicting interests and claims would again create 
a struggle for power, and the result would be, sepa- 
ration, and a Southern confederacy, or, more pro- 
bably, another failure added to the list of abortive 
Southern Republics. The warnings and lessons 
offered, therefore, by the laws of race, plainly indi- 
cate, that neither by the acquisition of new terri- 



^ 46 

tory, nor by the revival of the slave-trade, would 
it be wise to encoara2;e the growth of the nearro 
under our government, nor to increase his influence 
over our fate. 

Another question of great importance is, how 
shall we govern the negro ? That we must govern 
him is plain, as already stated, because of his attri- 
butes and of ours. Accordingly we do govern him, 
wholly without his consent or participation, both in 
the North and the South. Bat in the South we 
make him a slave. Is this wise, is it morally right?" 
In the North, he is refused political liberty or power 
over public affairs, and the reason is, that he is 
unfit — permanently and naturally unfit — to exercise 
that power. In the South, he is deprived of per- 
sonal liberty, or power over himself. This is a 
great wrong, unless it be true that he is unable to 
exercise this power also, for his own good and the 
good of society. On the inherent, unalterable 
qualities of the negro, hinges the whole question of 
slavery. Fortunately for our justification, unfortu- 
nately for our country, all the researches of science, 
all the annals of the past, and all the facts of the 
present hour, prove that the negro is fit for servi- 
tude, that he requires guidance and protection, 
naturally seeks them, and renders in return, labor 
and obedience. Servitude arises from the relation 



47 

of strength to weakness ; and the negro is adapted 
to it, by his want of intellectual power, his feeble- 
ness of will, his docility, his good nature. He is 
submissive, and neither hates nor inspires hatred. 
He is improvident, and incapable of forethought, 
because in Africa, forethought was unnecessary to 
supply his wants. He is indolent for the same 
reason, but acquires habits of industry under the 
control of a superior will. In his native regions, 
his freedom was the freedom of savage hfe. He 
did not leave his nature behind him when he came 
here, and if released from the sustaining and direct- 
ing power of the white race, he would return again 
to savage life. It is remarkable, moreover, that 
slavery exists in Africa. The black races of that 
country differ in mental and physical qualities and 
force. The stronger enslave the weaker, and those 
races that are slaves there, are those which have 
been brought here. The internal evidence of the 
negro's nature, showing him to be fit for slavery, 
is corroborated by the fact, that he has been, in all 
ages, contented and submissive in slavery. This 
is true of no other race. The Mongol, the North 
American Indian, cannot be enslaved ; they would 
resist. The aborigines, of South America and the 
West Indies, withered and perished under slavery. 
It suits only the negro, who lives and labors, thrives 
and increases, under its protecting care. 



48 

Slavery is servitude established by law ; servi- 
tude during life, for one who cannot aspire to a 
higher lot ; servitude of a race, fitted by nature for 
that lot. It provides for the negro the guidance 
and support through life that he needs, and ex- 
presses the relation which his nature bears to that 
of the white man. Slavery, moreover, performs 
the duty of magistrates, police, prisons, poor-houses 
and hospitals, for the negro race in the South, with- 
out expense to government, and far more efficiently 
than any government could perform them. Slavery 
is not in itself a good thing ; on the contrary, it is 
an evil thing, and bears fruit according to its na- 
ture. But we have the negro, and therefore we 
must have slavery. Our system of slavery, doubt- 
less, is far from perfect. Its chief defects arise 
from the predominance given to the mercenary ele- 
ment of the relation over the benevolent, in the 
laws of the Southern States. These laws declare, 
that a slave is a mere chattel, and the Supreme 
Court of the United States has declared so too. 

But the laws of nature say, servitude is the 
natural relation between the negro and the white 
race ; that a slave is a man, and not a thing, and, 
therefore, entitled to justice and humanity; that he 
has rights which impose duties on the master, and 
that the dominant race, having power over the ne- 
gro, is responsible for his well-being. The laws of 



40 

the South, and the decision in the case of Dred 
Scott, contradict these truths ; but they are affirm- 
ed by the general sentiment and practice of the 
Southern people, and by the Constitution, which 
correctly describes a slave as a ^'^ person held to ser- 
vice or labor," using this language emphatically, as 
is well known, for the express purpose of denying 
that slaves are property ; a doctrine worthy only 
of slave-traders and African tribes, from whom it 
was derived. 

Servitude is the natural position of the negro, 
and slavery j)laces him in that position. It is the 
system which the Southern Saxon has adopted for 
governing the large and increasing numbers of the 
black race with which he lives, — which he must go- 
vern for his own safety and prosperity. With all 
its defects, evils and dangers, it does, in fact, ac- 
complish its object. Southern society is protected 
from either the violence, or the pauperism, or vice, 
of the negro race, whilst that race is also protected 
by slavery, and maintained in a condition superior 
to that of its brethren in the North, or in Africa. 
The negro is worth our care, not only because of 
his own good qualities, but because he has power 
over us, which we cannot get rid of. Under all pos- 
sible circumstances, and for all future time, the ne- 
gro will be our companion, and form part of our 
population. Upon him depend the wealth and pros- 

5 



50 

perity of the South, for what would become of these 
without cotton ? The manufactures and commerce 
of Europe and of the North, are sustained also by 
cotton and other Southern produce, the result, 
either exclusively or chiefly, of negro labor. 

The question, therefore, of how to govern the 
negro, is of interest to us and to the world. If it 
be true, that slavery or servitude established and 
regulated by law, accords with his nature and with 
ours, — is a benefit to him and to us, — then slavery 
harmonizes with those]obligations of morality which 
neither men nor nations may disobey with impu- 
nity, and it is our duty, as a nation, to maintain 
slavery, and, if possible, ameliorate and improve it. 
It is the duty also of the North, to the men of their 
own race in the South, heartily and cordially to 
support and^ assist them, in their difficult task of 
governing a subject race, whose increasing numbers 
threaten, at no distant day, to break down all bar- 
riers of Testraint. They, the men of the South, 
have this task imposed on them, and are engaged 
in fronting its dangers, enduring its evils, and are 
responsible for its results. They, therefore, should 
have^ control over slavery, to keep it, to alter and 
amend it, or,^to abolish it, as they think fit. 

It has been shown before, that the public opinion 
of the northern people, on the subject of slavery, 
arises, necessarily, from the respective characteris- 



51 

tics of the negro and the Saxon races. The same 
characteristics or organic laws, dictate a line of 
policy in harmony with that sentiment, and shoAV 
that our government ought to prevent the exten- 
sion of the negro into any territories now possessed 
by the nation, which afford a home and sphere of 
useful labor to the white race ; that the growth of 
the negro should not be encouraged, either by the 
acquisition of new territory, or by importations 
from Africa, and that the supremacy of the superior 
race, in the Southern States, should be supported, 
by maintaining slavery in those States, so far as 
the action of the general government is necessary 
for that object. 

It is satisfactory to find that the principles thus 
disclosed by the philosophy of race, are also in the 
Constitution. The reason is, that it necessarily 
grew out of and was controlled by those principles. 
By the powers it grants and the duties it imposes, 
the government has authority to rule and regulate 
the national territories, to make war and treaties, 
to prohibit the slave-trade, to suppress domestic 
insurrection, and to cause fugitives from " service 
or labor" to be returned to those " to whom such 
service or labor may be due." These provisions 
cover the whole ground, as if inspired by prophetic 
wisdom. They are sufficient for the security of 
the South, and for all the wise and just plans or 



52 

purposes of the North. Let us abide by the Con- 
stitution, and so deal with the negro and with 
slavery, as to reap what of good they produce, 
diminish their evils and dangers, and postpone, as 
far as we can, the dark day of disunion and Southern 
decline, if that day be indeed approaching. 



MR. DALLAS AND LORD BROUGHAM.* 



Are tliese things necessities ? 
Tlien let ns meet tliem like necessities." 

Henry IV., Pakt II. 

Some weeks ago, there was a meeting in London 
of the International Statistical Congress. Prince 
Albert presided, and the American Minister was 
present. One of the members of this scientific 
assembly, also present, was a colored man from 
Canada; and in the course of the proceedings, Lord 
Brougham pubhcly called the attention of Mr. Dal- 
las to that fact. Mr. Dallas made no reply. His 
experience enabled him, no doubt, to judge cor- 
rectly of the proprieties of his place and the occa- 
sion, and it is only just to him to believe, that he 
had sufficient reasons for remaining silent; that he 
did what, under the circumstances, was right to do. 

* This Essay was written for the North American and 
United States Gazette, and published in that journal, August 
18, 1860. The author re-prints the article here, because the 
topics discussed in it are pertinent to tlie argument of the 
foregoing Essay. 
5* 



64 

Had there been no such reasons, however, the ob- 
jects of the Society, the character of the assembly, 
the presence of the dusky member from Canada, 
and the speech of Lord Brougham, all afforded a 
scene, an audience and an opportunity for telling 
some truths about slavery, worth telling to the 
English people. Let us suppose that no rules of 
etiquette, no fears of compromising official dignity 
by exciting what perhaps might have become an 
unseemly discussion, had interfered, would it not 
have produced a good effect on the minds of the 
cultivated persons present, and on the public opin- 
ion of England and America, had Mr. Dallas made 
something like the following 



Mr. Chairman: — 

I am a guest of this learned Society, rather than 
a participator in its proceedings. I came here to 
look on and listen, not to speak. The remarks, 
however, of the noble Lord who has just addressed 
you, induce me to crave for a few moments the 
attention of this meeting. His Lordship has called 
on me to notice the flict, that a man of the African 
race is here present, received and treated as an as- 
sociate, by the eminent gentlemen around me. I 



55 

will not assume, I will not suppose that Lord 
Brougham intended anything ofTensive to me or to 
the country I have the honor to represent, by what 
he said. His fame is so widely spread in Europe 
and in America, that all the world knows him to 
be opposed to slavery. He is opposed to it, I feel 
sure, not as an enemy to the United States, but as 
a philosopher and statesman, on what he deems 
just and reasonable grounds, and he no doubt meant 
to say, by his pointed allusion to me, — " Behold, 
Mr. Dallas, behold men of America, here in Eng- 
land, the foremost nation of the world, is a negro, 
received as a companion and an equal, in a circle, 
composed of some of the brightest names of their 
country, in social rank, in literature and science ! 
Why, then, do you make him a slave ?" 

I must believe that the person referred to, find- 
ing him as I do, in such distinguished society, has 
qualities which render him in some degree worthy 
of his companions. It very often happens in my 
country, that men of his race possess estimable vir- 
tues, and are remarkable for truth, honesty, and 
fidelity ; it sometimes happens that, under fiivor- 
able circumstances, they make considerable intel- 
lectual progress, and acquire knowledge, which does 
not imply mental powers of a high order. But we 
have some acquaintance at home with negroes. 
There are four millions of them in our Southern 



56 

States ; and I can assert with confidence, that our 
experience is hke that of all other countries, of all 
other ages recorded by history, and that examples 
even of the moderate endowments and attainments 
I have mentioned, are the exceptions, not the rule. 
The race is not gifted with the force of character 
or intellect that fits it to originate or sustain a na- 
tive, independent civilization. It does not produce 
artists, poets, and philosophers — not even soldiers, 
orators, lawyers, and statesmen. There are no 
negro Shakspeares, Raphaels, or Bacons ; no Marl- 
borough or Wellington, no Pitt, Fox, Mansfield, or 
Brougham, with black skin and woolly hair, either 
in the past or the present. Even in the humbler 
spheres of business and industry, the negro is dis- 
qualified by nature to conduct the commerce, the 
manufactures, or the mechanic arts of a civilized 
community. All these require for their manage- 
ment, mental powers which the negro does not 
possess. As a general rule, he is fit only for manual 
labor that requires but little thought; and to achieve 
in this, valuable results, he must be directed by su- 
perior intelligence. He has therefore occupied, 
wherever he has been associated with the white 
race, the position of a servile class or caste. He 
occupies this position in America. In the North 
as well as in the South, the menial and inferior 
offices of society are assigned to him, or rather, he 



57 

falls into them naturally by the operation of laws, 
which no social or political arrangements, are strong 
enough to alter or resist. 

But in our Southern States we mnke him a slave. 
I know that this w-ord has an unpleasant sound to 
an English ear. There are many in America, also, 
who do not like it. Nevertheless, slavery exists 
there, and must exist in some form or other for 
many years to come, perhaps forever, by reason of 
the natural laws of race to which I have alluded. 
We have four millions of negroes in our South, very 
different, indeed, with few exceptions, from him to 
whose presence here my attention has been called. 
They constitute, in fact, a vast mass of ignorance 
and barbarism, which cannot govern itself, either 
for their good or ours — which, therefore, we must 
govern. We, the superior race, have the right, by 
reason of our superiority, to govern them for our own 
safety and interest, not neglecting at the same time 
their well-being. Thus justified, and for the pur- 
pose of accomplishing these objects, we have estab- 
lished slavery as a system of government for the 
negro race, wherever it exists in such numbers as to 
make slavery necessary; or to speak with more 
philosophical as well as historical accuracy, slavery 
has arisen naturally from the contact of the two 
races. It furnishes, without expense to govern- 
ment, an efficient magistracy and police to main- 



58 

tain order and subordination; it enforces industry 
and temperance, without poor-houses or prisons; it 
promotes the happiness of the negro, by connect- 
ing the interest of the master with the health and 
strength, the cheerfulness and contentment of the 
slave. Slavery, therefore, with us, means care, 
guidance, just control, and protection for the ne- 
gro ; it means, also, security, order, enterprise, 
wealth, and progress for ourselves. The presence 
of the negro race in vast numbers among us, ren- 
ders slavery a necessity, not a choice. It would 
not have been our choice, — for we are quite Eng- 
lish in our love of liberty. Being a necessity, 
we have used it, not cruelly or oppressively, but 
in a manner worthy a people that is proud to 
number Alfred and Hampden among its ancestors, 
and regards magna charta and the common law, as 
its richest inheritance. The theoretical harshness 
of the system is modified and softened in practice 
by the character of those who apply it. The negro 
has been confided by Providence to the care and 
keeping of the magnanimous Saxon race — of that 
race which has built up in this Island such a splendid 
edifice of knowledge, liberty, wealth, and power; 
which has based its mighty and beneficent civiliza- 
tion on the eternal maxims of truth, justice, and 
humanity, and which has erected on the same 
secure foundations, an empire in the West, whose 



59 

giant proportions are as yet faintly traced by the 
hand of time. These two great branches of this 
noble fxmily, I humbly hope, and trust, and believe, 
are destined to inherit the earth. May they grow 
and prosper, and be united in friendship as in blood; 
and may they rule in the East and the West, for 
the good of the world. 

The care of the negro has been thus confided to 
us in America, as a trust. We have power over 
him; we are therefore responsible for his welfare. 
I will not now speak of the perils and difficulties 
that accompany this trust, or of the evils and cala- 
mities it brings with it. We know these well 
enough at home ; and those present may know 
something of them, too, from many popular works 
in the current literature of the day. Nor will I 
deny short-comings in the performance of our duty. 
Irresponsible power is ever liable to abuse, and 
mercenary motives are not the best protection for 
helpless weakness. In proof of this, if proof were 
needed, I might point to Ireland and India, cases 
where an inferior race has been subjected to the 
power of England, of whom England has been and 
is, the trustee. I refer to them in no invidious 
spirit, for I believe that all here present will ngree 
with me, that in the government of each of these 
dependencies, there has been much to deplore, and 
much to condemn. 



60 

So it has been with our treatment of the negroes. 
Nevertheless we are not ashamed of slavery. We 
do not apologize for it ; we justify it by pointing to 
its results. Such is the necessary imperfection of 
all human institutions, that in speaking of a system 
that operates on large masses of men, we must be 
satisfied with general effects, though particular cases 
of hardship are to be regretted, and if possible 
remedied. Slavery is an out-growth of Africa, 
which, with Africa, has been transported to our 
shores. There is nothing excellent or desirable in 
the nature of either, but the presence of the one 
has made the other necessary. Without Africa we 
should not have had slavery, but having both, we 
must make the best of them ; disarm them, so far 
as we can, of their mischievous tendencies ; convert 
them if we can, into instruments of good. The 
justification of slavery is in the evils it has pre- 
vented, and the benefits it has conferred, not on us 
alone, but on the world. It has made of the negroes, 
an orderly and industrious laboring class, well fed, 
well clothed, on the whole, kindly treated. Of the 
suffering that is caused by want, by excessive toil, 
by unrestrained vice, and by punishment inflicted 
by the law, they endure less than any laboring 
class in Europe. If deprived of the protection and 
wholesome restraint afforded by slavery, they 
would become helpless paupers through indolence 



Gl 

and license, and relapse speedily into African bar- 
barism; wretched themselves, and destructive to the 
social fabric under whose shelter they now live and 
thrive. 

Whilst slavery is thus a benefit to the negro, 
by providing for his wants and supplying to 
his labor the intelligent guidance it requires, by 
means of that labor, vast tracts of fertile land have 
been cultivated, that would else have remained a 
wilderness, and made to contribute to the comfort 
and accommodation of man. I need not enume- 
rate the products of slave-labor, which freight so 
largely the commerce of all nations, which employ 
therefore so much capital and industry, and supply 
so many wants and luxuries. I will mention only 
cotton, that wonderful plant, which in some of its 
forms, enters every household, however high, or 
however humble, in Europe and America. How 
much of comfort, cleanliness, and refinement has it 
given to the poor, how much of these, and of ele- 
gance, and beauty too, has it furnished to the rich. 
Cotton is the basis of the wealth and prosperity of 
our Southern States, and enters largely as an ele- 
ment of the growing power of the North. But an 
article of such universal use becomes necessarily a 
part of the foundation of general commerce and of 
the wealth of nations. If it has enriched us, has 
it not enriched England too, and in ampler measure ? 



62 

Look at your newspapers, and the daily reports of 
your markets ; at your statistics of commerce and 
manufactures, and see what a lordly and command- 
ing part, cotton plays in your affairs. It gives to 
us who grow it, who have the responsibility, the 
risks and the evils of the system of labor that pro- 
duces it, an annual income of less than two hundred 
millions of dollars ; it gives to you who manufac- 
ture it, who send it abroad in your ships over all 
the world, a yearly profit of many hundred millions 
of pounds sterling. Some of the richest towns and 
counties in England owe their wealth to cotton. It 
affords food and employment to many thousands of 
Encflishmen who else would want both ; it fur- 
nishes profit on many millions of English capital ; 
it has helped therefore, in no small degree, to erect 
the towering structure of English manufactures 
and commerce. By creating a home market, and 
a supply of manure, cotton has also largely pro- 
moted the growth of English agriculture, and has 
thus supported the splendor of many a noble home, 
as well as the comfort of the farm-house and the 
cottage. This wonderous growth of population, in- 
dustry, and wealth, thus produced by cotton, must 
be sustained by it. Take away from beneath the 
massy fabric, the delicate fibres of this little plant, 
and I have the authority of your own leading jour- 
ntil for saying, that the power and prosperity of 



63 

England, the order of society, and the stability of 
the throne itself, would be in danger. I say this 
from no envious or grudging sentiment. You are 
welcome to our cotton, — nay it is a matter of busi- 
ness, — you pay for it. If you make more out of it 
than we do, it is a fair reward of your ingenuity, 
skill and statesmanship. I allude to the subject 
merely, to remind you that cotton is the result of 
slave labor ; that without slavery, that labor would 
be inefficient and unproductive ; that therefore, the 
hoes of our slave-gangs on the Mississippi, are build- 
ing up the edifice of English wealth and power, as 
the trowel of the stone-mason erects the walls of a 
palace ; that if slavery be an evil, we in America 
bear all the brunt of it, and receive a part only of 
the gain ; and that if it be a wrong and a crime, 
England shares with us the guilt, for she does as 
much to sustain it as we do. 

It may be said, moreover, that the origin of 
slavery belongs to the colonial period of our his- 
tory. England landed the first negro on our shores, 
and planted there an institution, which has struck 
its roots so deeply, and bears such tempting and 
golden, though also bitter fruits, that it seems to be 
part of our destiny forever. If slavery be a crime, 
therefore, England is partkeps criminis, and it does 
not lie in her mouth to reproach us with it, more 
especially as she enjoys its abundant harvest, bear- 



64 

ing herself none of the heat and burden of the day. 
In one of the noblest dramas of your — I mean of 
our greatest poet, a guilty king tries to pray, but 
cannot ; 

" Forgive me my foul murder ! 
That cannot be, since I am still possessed 
Of those effects for which I did the murder, 
My crown, mine own ambition and my Queen. 
May one be pardoned and retain the oflfence V 

If we are guilty, so is England, and both to her peni- 
tence for her share of the crime, and to her condem- 
nation of our share, the mills of Manchester are an 
answer. 

It would ill become me, however, in such a pre- 
sence as this, when attempting to justify slavery, 
to confine my argument to the mere material view 
of the question, momentous as that really is; — to say 
that slavery is a source of wealth to us and to the 
world, that it maintains social peace and order in a 
large portion of our country, and that it secures 
also the physical well-being of the subject race. 
The reply is obvious, that being as we are, the 
guardians of the negro, we are bound to look to 
something higher than our own selfish good or his 
bodily needs, and to provide for his moral and in- 
tellectual improvement. At least, we may fairly 
be required to show, that slavery is no bar to such 



65 

improvement. It would be a sad thing indeed, if 
true, that these four million negroes of ours, are 
well fed and clothed, only that they may toil for 
our mercenary advantage, and at the same time by 
our laws and our practice, are intentionally kept in 
a state of mental and moral degradation. I admit 
that no temporal good to them or to us, could jus- 
tify such tyranny. And herein lies the difficulty 
of the case, felt in America more deeply than any- 
where, because to us it seems well-nigh hopeless. 
But the evil arises from the nature of the negro, 
and not from slavery. He makes no spontaneous 
moral or intellectual progress, whether a slave or 
free ; he never has made any in his native regions. 
He has never risen, at any period of his history, 
even to the low grade of Chinese civilization. He 
acquires no arts, he builds no cities or ships, he in- 
vents no machinery, ho paints no pictures, he writes 
no books, he forms no organized communities, he 
makes no laws, he cannot appreciate truth or 
beauty, and he is a fetich worshipper at all times 
and all places, if left to himself. He is naturally a 
savage and a heathen, and may enjoy in Africa 
such happiness as belongs to that condition. But 
in that condition he cannot remain, when he forms 
part of a civilized community ; we cannot per- 
mit him to remain in it, both for his own sake 
and for ours. What, then, are we to do ? We 

6* 



66 

cannot raise him, he cannot raise himself to onr 
level; he cannot take care of himself amid the 
energetic struggles of a superior race. He would 
sink to lower depths than his original barbarism, 
and our four millions of his race would become 
a dangerous and intolerable mass of ignorance, 
degradation and pauperism. He must, therefore, 
be governed, guided, cared for ; and slavery, which 
gives him a governor and care-taker, does not de- 
press, but elevates him. It supplies the want of 
his nature, a directing mind. Without slavery, he 
would fall into a state far worse for him, that of a 
slave without a master. In contact or competition 
with the white race, he vv^ould be everybody's slave, 
and no one would be bound by duty, or induced by 
interest, to support or protect him. Our slaves in 
America are not without religious instruction, and 
the arts of industry which they are taught, and as- 
sociation with the white race, are an education, im- 
perfect indeed, but superior to that of Africa ; and 
without slavery they would get none at all. They 
have been elevated by this education. The race 
now with us is superior to its brethren in Afri- 
ca, — to its ancestors who first landed on our shores. 
This is well knovvm, and is made manifest whenever 
the native African is brought to our country, as he 
sometimes is, in captured slave ships. 

I have said that I could not but believe the 



67 

" colored gentleman" from Canada, to possess ta- 
lents and education, whicli make him a very rare 
exception to the general character of his race, else 
he would not be found in' such good company. 
What fortunate circumstances in his history have 
produced such a result, I do not know. I would 
not venture to assert that slavery encourages, or 
even permits such a development of mind as he no 
doubt exhibits, for I have never seen a negro, whe- 
ther a slave or free, whom I considered worthy to be 
a member of this learned society, or the companion of 
the cultivated and distinguished gentlemen around 
me. Nevertheless it is true, that negroes do often, as 
slaves, rise to employments which require thought 
and skill, and whicli imply integrity. Many can 
read and write ; they become mechanics, sometimes 
book-keepers, and are frequently entrusted with 
the management of farms and plantations, and with 
the direction and control of their fellow-laborers. 
Slavery, therefore, if it depresses, also elevates. 
It elevates the mass, and works well on the whole. 
That it is the best possible system, as now consti- 
tuted and administered, by which to govern the 
large and increasing numbers of the negro race in 
America, I will not affirm. Time and experience 
may improve it. But it is that which we novv^ think 
the best, though we are not entirely satisfied with 
it, for it produces evil as well as good. We would 



68 

gladly exchange it for a better system, did we 
know of one, but the interests at stake are too im- 
jiortant for experiment or rash innovation. We 
therefore maintain slavery, not because we do not 
love liberty, but because we believe the negro 
unfit for it, and because we believe slavery, in some 
form, or the complete subordination of the black to 
the white race, in harmony with natural laws, and 
essential to the social security, and to the wealth, 
progress and power of our country. 

For all these reasons, a system of caste has grown 
up in the North as well as the South of the United 
States, similar to that which prevailed for so many 
centuries in the grand and noble civilization of an- 
cient India, founded on inequality of race ; the black 
having been there, as with us, the servile and low- 
est. With this system, the exclusiveness of caste 
has been introduced. It is not the custom in the 
United States, for white and black to meet on terms 
of equality, and this arises, not from hatred or con- 
tempt of the negro, who is neither hateful nor des- 
picable, but from pride of race. This feeling is by 
no means inconsistent with mutual respect and 
affection between individuals of the two races ; for 
such sentiments are very common — more especially 
between master and slave, — and throw a softening 
veil over the harsher features of the relation. I 
confess I nm not without this pride or prejudice, if 



69 

you will, myself. Though I know it to be the re- 
sult of education and association, it has the force 
of instinct. Nevertheless, I blame not others who 
are free from such feelings, more especially those 
of another country, who have not been subjected 
to the influences which have formed my sentiments 
on this subject. I think it moreover prudent and 
proper, that a traveller, especially if he represent 
his own country, should conform to the customs 
and manners of the people he visits. Were I min- 
ister to Rome, I would, if such be the usage, kneel 
and kiss the slipper of the Pope ; if to China, I 
would observe all the frivolous ceremonial of its 
court etiquette, and try to eat with chop-sticks. 
In Uke manner, being here, minister to England, 
and finding a negro moving in the highest circles of 
English society, I cheerfully acquiesce, repress any 
exhibition of repugnance or surprise, and should 
have taken no notice of the circumstance, had not 
my attention been publicly called to it, by the dis- 
tinguished and noble Lord, whose remarks have in- 
duced me to trespass thus much on the indulgence 
of this meeting. 

This is a meagre sketch of what Mr. Dallas might, 
and could, and perhaps would have said, had he 
deemed it right to say anything. He would have 
filled up and enlarged the outhne, with illustrations 



70 

drawn from the stores of his thought and knowledge, 
and clothed it with the vesture of his graceful and 
happy style. It is too bad that England should 
taunt us with slavery, and all the while grow rich 
on our cotton, and fat on our corn; the former ex- 
clusively the product of slave labor, the latter indi- 
rectly so, for cotton produces the English demand 
for our corn, which makes it grow. Some of our 
papers are indignant at the speech of Lord Brougham, 
but this is a mistake, for resentment admits that 
slavery is a blemish on our national character, that 
we are insultable on that point, whereas the insti- 
tution, if not, as some assert a positive blessing, is 
a necessity, imposed on us by the negro race, 
and therefore no reproach. The remark of Lord 
Brougham was no doubt meant for an argument, 
as he afterwards said it was, not out of place at the 
meeting of a statistical society, and as such, it 
should have been answered, if answered at all. If 
a covert sneer was also intended, that maybe lightly 
borne, if we can refute the argument. 

Cecil. 



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